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Americans are religious people who don't know much about religion, according to a new survey.

Americans are religious people who don't know much about religion, according to a new survey.

The nonreligious people - atheists and agnostics - know the most.

Those polled were asked 32 questions about religion and, on average, got 16 right in the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, which was released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The questions - covering such things as Christianity, Judaism, world religions and the role of religion in public life - were posed to 3,412 adults over the phone between May 19 and June6.

People turned out to be ignorant not only of other people's faiths but also of their own. For example, only 47 percent of Protestants correctly identified Martin Luther as the man who inspired the Reformation.

Atheists and agnostics, as one group, did the best, averaging 20.9 correct answers out of 32. They were followed by Jews (20.5) and Mormons (20.3). Of all groups, Mormons knew the most about the Bible.

Middle-range scores went to white evangelical Protestants (17.6), white Catholics (16), white mainline Protestants (15.8) and people who described their faith as "nothing in particular" (15.2). Black Protestants and Latino Catholics had the lowest average scores, 13.4 and 11.6, respectively.

Researchers did not include Muslims in their analysis because they did not obtain enough interviews with them.

Respondents overestimated the level of restriction on religion in public schools. While 89 percent knew that public-school teachers cannot lead a class in prayer, only 36 percent knew that those teachers could offer a comparative-religion course.

Ed Sweeney, an atheist who lives in Upper Arlington, wasn't surprised that nonbelievers knew the most about religion.

"In my own case, I did a lot of study before I came to the conclusion I came to," he said. "A lot of people who are religious take the religion of their parents and go to church and don't think about it."

The three highest-scoring groups might have more knowledge because being in the minority might make them more conscious of the religions of others, said John C. Green, a senior researcher for the Pew Forum and a political scientist at the University of Akron.

The low scores overall did not surprise him, as "the American public generally tends to have low levels of information about many things," he said.

Indeed, the general questions that researchers included to get an idea of how religious knowledge compares also produced some scores that seem lower than they should be. Only 59 percent of respondents could name the vice president of the U.S., Joe Biden.

Also unsurprised by the poor religion-question scores was Monsignor Joseph Hendricks of the 3,200-family St. Brigid of Kildare Catholic Church in Dublin.

Only 55 percent of Catholics correctly said that the church teaches that the bread and wine used during Communion become Christ's body and blood. More than four in 10 Catholics said the church's teaching was that the items are mere symbols of Christ's body and blood.

The secularization of society and the diminishing emphasis on religion are reasons for the lack of religious knowledge in the U.S, Hendricks said.

But the survey isn't bad news, he added. "It's really an opportunity for the church and for ministers, Catholic priests specifically, to have the ability to evangelize and re-evangelize the people about the very basic doctrines of what we believe."

The survey found that the best predictor of religious knowledge is the amount of education a person has, with college graduates getting nearly eight more questions right on average than people with a high-school education or less.

However, when researchers controlled for educational and other differences, atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons did the best.